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Photon Paint v2.0 Software for Commodore Amiga
 
Photon Paint v2.0
Copyright 1989 MicroIllusions
WHAT IS PHOTON PAINT?:
PHOTON PAINT is a full-featured Hold And Modify (HAM) painting program for theCommodore Amiga line of computers. It specifically utilizes the unique HAM protocol, which allows all of the possible 4096 colors accessible on the Amiga to be used on screen at one time.
Multiple pages can be created and animated “real time” on the screen. Special painting tools designed to facilitate the creation of animation sequences have been incorporated in PHOTON PAINT, so that this program can be used to produce animated scenes for use with our animation playback and sound synchronization program, CEL ANIMATOR.
Many of the features and techniques associated with other popular Amiga paint programs are combined within PHOTON PAINT, including those previously limited to EITHER a 32 color paint program, OR a HAM paint program; for example:
Real-time operation of freehand drawing tools.
The ability to paint in exactly the chosen color, regardless of background color, and to choose between painting the exact color, or allowing HAM to modify it according to the background and adjacent colors.
Four types of fill functions: the standard Flood Fill, which fills all adjoining pixels of the selected color area; Boundary Fill, which enables the user to fill an area surrounded by a specific color: Free-shape Fill which allows you to outline a free-hand drawn shape to be filled; and Polygon Fill, which allows you to outline an area to be filled using a series of straight lines. Each allows you the option of using customized foreground and/or background drawing mode “setups.”
All popular brush operations, including Flipping, Resizing, Rotating, and Tilting (perspective).
Blend Mode, allowing blending of a brush or shape with the background, and smooth, dithered shading.
Rub Through, which allows pixels from an underlying spare page or subsequent page to be brought into the current page.
Pattern, allowing you to create a pattern out of any current pic-brush; functioning with all drawing tools.
Stencil, protecting areas you do not want to alter while painting.
Hue Mode, allowing you to replace only the Hue of the underlying color with that of the applied color; this enables you to change only the actual color without altering its tonal qualities.
H&S Mode allowing the replacement of both the Hue and the Saturation component of the underlying color with that of the applied color; this enables you to colorize black and white pictures.
Three available methods of cutting a brush from the screen: Rectangular, Free-hand (Lasso) and Polygonal.
An Airbrush tool, which also works with color cycling.
Some additional features UNIQUE to Photon Paint include:
- A functional Pantograph, enabling you to copy portions of a picture without having to surround them as a brush.
- Separate drawing Mode and Source “setups” for BOTH the Foreground Color (left mouse button) AND the Background Color (right mouse button).
- The ability to create a series of Alternate Pages in either of the two HAM screen resolutions, and animate them on the screen “real time.”
- The ability to move the menu containing the brush gadgets and Color Palette up and down the screen, or remove it entirely during painting operations; recalling it from the menu bar, or from the keyboard.
- Reducing the size of the Brush and Color Palette Menu during work by selecting a toggle gadget which alternately removes and replaces the lower (color palette) portion.
- More sophisticated brush operations, including twisting, adjustable transparency, and mouse operated perspective tilting.
- Wrapping of brushes onto 3-D objects: both geometric shapes and asymmetric free-hand drawn shapes (surface mapping), with optional light-source specification; setting of optional light-source intensity, and adjustable dithering of light-dependent shading.
- Use Amiga fonts with specified light source shading; dithering; 3-D effect; automatic drop shadows; Colorfonts are supported.
- Movable and resizable magnification window with built-in gadgets allowing variable sizing of the magnified pixels and scrolling around the magnified image in all four directions.
- Choice between transparent or opaque background color, selectable from the menu bar.
- 64 color palette display, with the ability to alter any color box on the palette without affecting the screen pixels previously painted using the color in that position; thus allowing the use of all 4096 colors in the same painting.
- Ability to create palette color spreads using EITHER Red Green Blue (RGB) OR Hue Saturation Value calculations.
- Ability to specify the 16 base colors in the Amiga’s internal color registers; enabling the artist to select the group of colors which will be the basis for all HAM calculations.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
512 K MINIMUM; 1 MEGABYTE RECOMMENDED FOR 320 X 400 MODE; ADDITIONAL MEMORY RECOMMENDED FOR ANIMATION DEVELOPMENT; EXTERNAL DISK DRIVE RECOMMENDED.
PHOTON PAINT will function properly in 320 X 200 resolution (non-interlaced mode) with a minimum of 512 KRAM. The programs architecture is segmented, allowing full functionality in lo-resolution on 512 K machines. A possible exception could been countered when using the text function in very large font styles of approximately 60 pixels high or more, or when using other combinations of functions and operations which use up large portions of available memory.
1 Megabyte is recommended if you intend to work in the 320 X 400 (interlaced mode) format. 512 K will be adequate for many functions, but some operations, such as the “undo” function, and spare screen, will usually be refused due to memory shortages.
Animation development will require the highest amount of available memory. One megabyte would be the bare minimum, and two megabytes or more will afford you much greater flexibility.
Overlays will be read from the disk occasionally, depending upon the amount of available memory; therefore a second disk drive is recommended. This will enable the user to leave the program disk in the first drive (df0:), and maintain a separate data disk in the second drive (df1:) for saving artwork.
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